


Password: Je t'aime

by DarkBalance



Series: The Adventures of Chat Noir & Kitty Noire [4]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrien & Marinette are siblings, Adrinette April, Adrinette April 2020, Age Regression/De-Aging, Big brother Adrien Agreste, Day At The Beach, De-Aged Marinette, Doting Adrien, Family Fluff, Flirty Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Fluff, Gen, Marinette Dupain-Cheng Is Not Ladybug, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug Is So Done, Siblings!AU, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, for obvious reasons, no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:34:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26655985
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkBalance/pseuds/DarkBalance
Summary: In which Adrien bribes his sister into reading and Marinette is throwing the whole brother away.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir & Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Emilie Agreste/Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth
Series: The Adventures of Chat Noir & Kitty Noire [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1697335
Comments: 1
Kudos: 33
Collections: Adrinette April 2020





	Password: Je t'aime

**Author's Note:**

> Adrinette April prompt #: letter

It was a rare family trip to the beach in Marseilles. And by rare, Adrien meant it’s never happened before. And by "family trip," he meant that his mother sat with a book beneath a beach umbrella with his father, who was still running the company from a lawn chair. They made an awkward pair, Emélie in her netted dress worn over a swimsuit beside Gabriel wearing slacks and a loose linen shirt. It wasn’t perfect, but hey, they were all out of the mansion and Adrien was actually allowed to tan and there was his Princess, holding his hand as they walked along the shore collecting sea shells.

“Adrien, look!” Marinette held up a particularly large shell above her head, a wide grin stretched across her face.

“Wow, that’s a pretty one!”

“It’s my favorite!”

“You said that about the last one. And the one before that.”

“But they’re all so pretty,” Marinette pouted, and Adrien couldn’t help but find her absolutely adorable. Accepting the new seashell into the bucket he carried for her, Adrien checked his watch. It had been several hours since they last applied sunscreen, and while Adrien wanted a tan, he didn’t want a burn. Marinette’s skin was much fairer than his and therefore more prone to burning, so he decided it was time to take a break from the sun. With a groan of effort, Adrien lifted his sister into his arms and carried her back to where their blanket and umbrella were set up, a few yards away from their parents. Part of the agreement to the trip included Adrien babysitting Marinette; it had been a very spontaneous plan, and none of their standby babysitters had been able to rearrange their plans. Fortunately, as an intermediate member of the Doting Elder Brothers Club, Adrien didn’t mind one bit. He had wanted them to spend time together as a family, even if it simply became him and Marinette playing in the sand with their parents in the background.

“Alright, Princess,” said Adrien as he toted the girl across the beach, “it’s time to reapply sunscreen.”

“I don’t want sunscreen,” said Marinette. “It’s stinky and I can’t play in the sand while it dries.”

“We can play in the sand,” Adrien corrected her. “You just can’t roll around in it or play in the water. It’s just for ten minutes.”

“It’s ten whole minutes, Kitty. I’m gonna be so bored!”

“How about we practice your letters?”

“Do we have to?” Marinette pouted, but Adrien’s tolerance level was… not quite high enough to call himself impervious, but he’s seen worse. He could hold his Stern Big Brother Eyes and stare her into submission. This time.

“Princess, you haven’t been doing well on your spelling tests. Do you want Father to bring you a tutor and make you take boring classes at home like me?” Adrien raised an eyebrow at her in the way he knew particularly annoyed her. Marinette continued to pout for another moment before she gave in.

“Can I put lotion on you?”

“Give me your hands,” Adrien poured a small amount into Marinette’s upraised palms, just enough for her to rub it into his back for him. “Think you can spell avec for me?” Marinette’s small hands were clumsy, and Adrien was almost certain that most of it was spread into his shoulders, leaving his poor lower back defenseless against sunburn. Adrien considered if the pain and discomfort of a sunburn would be worth getting a few activities cut from his schedule. Maybe? Possibly?

Then he thought about how likely it was for someone to be Akumatized during that time.

Probably not.

“I don’t wanna,” Marinette answered after a long moment.

“Why not?”

“Spelling is hard.”

“Come on, it’s an easy word.”

“Okay, but, there’s so many that sound alike!” argued Marinette. “And what about e-accent-aigu and e-accent-grave and just plain e? Letters are so confusing!”

“Sure, but they all have their own sounds,” explained Adrien. “Didn’t your teacher tell you that?”

“Yes,” said Marinette, her hands going still on Adrien’s back. “But I got confused.” Adrien hummed, wondering how to explain French letters spelling to a six-year-old.

“So… the important thing is to remember the sounds they make,” he eventually said. “Are you finished?” Marinette’s hands lowered and she confirmed that yes, she was finished rubbing the lotion in. At his invitation, she crawled into his lap. Adrien took a bottle of water from the cooler and poured most of it into the sand in front of them, then started drawing letters in the sand. As he did so, he slowly explained how each one worked. Eventually, Adrien managed to walk Marinette through spelling a few small words, most of which he remembered from his own school work years ago. Adrien managed to walk Marinette through spelling a few small words, most of which he dragged through the dredges of his memory from years ago. For the most part, he only picked about six words and another dozen with similar rhymes and spelling patterns to ease his sister into being comfortable. Adrien also remembered not understanding how the letters worked when he was Marinette’s age, and how that frustration went a long way towards his dislike of reading and writing until he was almost twelve years old.

“Kitty, I’m tired, and you said ten minutes,” whined Marinette.

“Okay, okay, Princess, just one more word,” said Adrien, “and then, how about we go build a sandcastle?”

“Can it be big?”

“It will be the biggest sandcastle on this entire beach.”

“Can I have a picture to show my friends?”

“I’ll print it out before bath time.”

“Spell it! Write the word in the sand!” Adrien laughed at his sister’s eagerness.

“As my Princess commands,” Adrien grinned at Marinette’s giggle and proceeded to write one phrase into the sand. He was a little nervous since it wasn’t exactly in line with anything that the two of them had gone over, but it should have been simple enough for Marinette to follow without for Marinette to figure out without too much help from him. “There. What does that say?”

Marinette’s little forehead creased the slightest bit as she read the word. “J-E... Hey, that’s two words!”

“I tricked you. Now read it.” Marinette wasn’t very impressed with that, but she still looked back at the phrase in the sand, more determined than she had been the whole time they studied.

“J-E T-A-I-M-E…” she continued repeating the letters to herself for a few seconds before she tried sounding out each letter, just like Adrien taught her, then putting the sounds together. The first word, _“je”_ or “I,” she knew immediately. “ _Je_ … That’s not another accent, is it?” Marinette turned so that she could glare at Adrien for having the audacity to even consider giving her a word with an accent. He decided not to tell her that he did indeed almost give her a word with an accent in it, _bien joué_ , to be precise.

“No, that’s just an apostrophe.”

“That doesn’t make the letters be different, does it?”

“No, not really,” said Adrien. “Do you have it figured out?”

“ _Je… t’aime… Je t’aime? Je t’aime!_ Adrien, _je t’aime!_ ”

“You don’t have to be so excited, Princess, I love you too.”

“Adrien!”

“What? You were screaming about how much you love me! And you should, I’m awesome.”

“That’s it. I don’t want to build a sandcastle anymore. I’m asking Maman to get me some ice cream, and you can’t have any.”

“Aw, Princess! Come on, don’t be like that.”

“Maman! Adrien’s making bad jokes again.”

“Princess, you wound me!” Adrien called after her, following along to check on their parents. They looked up from their books, and Adrien was surprised to find Gabriel without his tablet for once.

“Is he now?” Emélie smoothed a hand over her daughter’s hair with a smile. “Is it time to take a break from your exhausting big brother?”

“I want ice cream, please?” she bounced in place, not quite turning on the kitten eyes, but dialing up the charm to at least a nine. “Then Adrien and I'm making a sandcastle. He said it's going to be the biggest castle this beach has ever seen!”

“Oh, did he now?” Gabriel’s eyebrows twitched, an expression Adrien hasn’t quite learned how to read yet. “Adrien, how often do I have to tell you to stop flirting with your sister?” Emélie covered her mouth, but it did very little to mute the laugh the comment pulled from her. For his part, Adrien felt his face warm just the slightest, but it was an accusation he was used to. Instead, he grinned at his father, glad to see him in a playful mood for once.

“Every day for as long as I have her.”

**Author's Note:**

> re-posted for ease of access


End file.
